Detect-Thru-Engage Laser
Ping
I bet Dale Brown is smiling.
(NAVSEA)(NSWC)(UAV)(LaWS)(DE&EWS)(PMS 405)(PEO IWS)KINETO (CIWS)(TDA)... That is a lot of acronyms for one article! Sounds like defensive missiles will become a thing of the past in the next 10-20 years.
Hopefully, Obama doesn’t spike this technology too. It’s not too long before bad guys are fielding RPV’s and cheap ballistic missiles that threaten aircraft carriers and stationery US troop installations. Being able to neutralize these threats is utterly key to continuing to have a military power of significance. Being able to neutralize them with a cheap shot from a laser is even better. Suddenly, the exchange is assymettric in our favor.
The threat to Obama is two fold: (1) On the one hand, he really doesn’t want us to have the upper hand against folks engaging in assymetric warfare against us. It seems unfair and as they are usually cute little people of color, they ought to have a sporting chance to win; and (2) Get this deployed and operational, it will quickly expand to the ability to destroy whole squadrons of say, Chinese fighters and cruise and ballistic missiles, again at an assymetric cost. I’m quite sure Obama has “giving away the Western Pacific to China” as a to-do item he hasn’t been able to check off yet. Having effective weapons systems in this regard will make it very difficult to abandon the Western pacific.